6. O what a mercy will you find it, when you come to age and business in the world! (1.) That you come with a clear conscience, not clogged, terrified and shamed with the sins of your youth. (2.) And that you come not utterly unfurnished with the knowledge, righteousness and virtue, of which you must make use in every condition, all your lives; when others are like those lads who will go to the Universities before they can so much as read or write. To live in a family of your own, and to trade and converse in the world, and especially to go to church, to hear, to pray, to communicate, to pray in private, to meditate, in a word, to live or die like a Christian or a man, and yet without the furniture of wisdom, faith, and serious godliness,-is more impossible and unwise than to go to sea without provision, or to war without arms, or to become a priest without book or understanding.

7. Secondly. And you that are young men, can scarcely conceive what a joy a wise and godly child is to his wise and godly parents! Read but Prov. x. 1; xiii. 1; xvii. 2. 25; xix. 13. 26; xxii. 11; xxiii. 15. 19. 24. &c. The prayers and instructions of your parents are comfortable to them, when they see the happy fruit and answer. They fear not God's judgments upon their houses, as they would do if you were Cains, or Hams, or Absaloms: they labour comfortably, and comfortably leave you their estates at death, when they see that they do not get and leave it for those that will serve the devil with it, and consume it on their lusts; but who will use it for God, for the Gospel, and their salvation. If you fall sick and die before them, they can rejoice that you are gone to Christ; and they need not mourn as David for Absalom, that you go to hell. If you overlive them, they leave the world the more easily, when they leave as it were part of themselves here behind them, who will carry on the work of God for which they lived, and will be blessings to the world when they are gone.

8. Thirdly. O what a mercy is it to church and state, to have our posterity to prove better than we have been, and do God more service than we have done, and take warning by our faults to avoid the like! Solomon tells us of one poor wise man that saved a city: and God would have spared Sodom, had there been but ten righteous persons in it. Wherever yet I lived, a few persons have proved the great

blessings of the place, to be teachers, guides and exemplary to others, as the little leaven that leaveneth the lump, and as the stomach, the liver, and other nutritive parts are to the body. Blessed is that church, that city, that country, that kingdom, which hath a wise, just and holy people! The nearest good and evil are the greatest: our estates are not so near us as wives and children, nor they so near us as our bodies, nor they so much to us as our souls. It is more to a person, house, or country, what they are, than what they have, or what others do for them or against them.

It is these that are God's children as well as ours, who are the blessing so often mentioned in the Scripture, who will, as the Rechabites, obey their father's wholesome counsels, rather than their lusts and carnal companions, and God before all:-"Who walk not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful. But their delight is in the law of the Lord, and in that law they meditate day and night." (Psal. i.) "Lo, such children are an heritage of the Lord; such fruit of the womb is his reward. They are as arrows in the hand of a mighty man. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed; but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate." (Psal. cxxvii. 3-5.) Were it not for wise and godly children to succeed us, religion, peace, and all public good, would be but as we frail mortals are,—like the grass or flowers of a few days' or years' continuance ; and the difference between a church and no church, between a kingdom of Christians and of Infidels, would be but like the difference between our waking and our sleeping time, so short as would make it the less considerable.

CHAP. VII.

Undeniable Reasons for the Repentance and speedy Amendment of those that have lived a fleshly and ungodly Life: by way of Exhortation.

1. AND now the commands of God, the love of my country and the church, the love of piety, true prosperity and peace, and the love of mankind, even of your own souls and bo

dies, do all command me to become once more an earnest suitor to the youth of this land, especially of London, who have hitherto miscarried, and lived a fleshly, sinful life. Thousands such as you are dead in sin, and past our warning, and past all hope and help for ever. Thousands that laughed at judgment and damnation, are now feeling that which they would not believe. By the great mercy of God it is not yet the case of you who read these words; but how soon it may be, if you are yet unsanctified, you little know. O that you knew what a mercy it is to be yet alive, and, after so many sins and dangers, to have one to warn you, and offer you salvation, and to be yet in possibility, and in a state of hope! In the name of Christ I most earnestly entreat you, a little while try to use your reason, and use it seriously in retired and sober consideration, till you have first well perused the whole course of your lives, and remembered what you have done and how, till you have thought what you have got or lost by sinning, and why you did it, and whether it was justifiable reason which led you to it, and such as you will stand to in your sober thoughts, yea, such as you will stand to before God at last. Consider seriously what comes next, and whither you are going, and whether your life have fitted you for your journey's end, and how your ways will be reviewed ere long, and how they will appear to you, and taste at death, judgment, and in the world to come. Hold on and think soberly a little while, what is in your hearts, and what is their condition, what you most love, and what you hate, and whether God or sinful pleasure be dearer and more delightful to you, and how you stand affected and related to the world to which you are very near. Surely reason would be reason if you would but use it; surely light would come in, if you would not shut the windows, and draw the curtains on you, and rather choose to sleep in darkness. Is there nothing within you that grudgeth at your folly, and threateneth you for being wilfully beside yourselves? If you would but spend one half hour in a day, or a week, in sober thinking whither you are going, what you have done, what you are, and what you must shortly see and be; how could you choose but be deeply offended with yourselves, for living like men quite void of understanding, against your God, against yourselves, against all the ends and obligations of life, and this for nothing?

But, it may be, the distinctness of your consideration may make it the more effectual: and if I put my motives by way of questions, will you consider them till you have well answered them all?

1. Are you not fully convinced, that there is a God of infinite power, knowledge and goodness, who is the perfect governor of all the world? God forbid that any of you should be so bad and so mad, as seriously to doubt of this, which the devils believe, while they would draw you to unbelief. To doubt of a perfect governing God, is to wink and doubt whether there be a sun, to stop your ears against the notorious testimony of heaven and earth, and every creature. You may next doubt whether there be any thing, if you doubt of God. For atoms and shadows are hardly perceived with more certainty, than the earth, the heavens, and sun.

2. If you believe that there is a governing God, do you not believe that he hath governing laws or notifications of his will, and that we owe this God more full, more absolute and exact obedience than can be due to any prince on earth, and greater love than to our dearest friend, He being infinitely good and love itself? Can you owe more to your flesh, or to any, than to your God that made you men, by whom you have life, and health, and time, and all the good that ever you received? Can you give him too much love and obedience? Or can you think that you need to fear being losers by him, and that your faithful duty should be in vain?

3. Is it God that needeth you, or you that need him? Can you give him any thing`that he wants, or do you want what he hath to give? Can you live an hour without him? Or be kept without him from pain, misery or death? Is it not for your own need, and your own good, that he requireth your service? Do you know what his service is? It is thankfully to receive his greatest gifts, to take his medicines to save your souls, and to feast on his prepared comforts. He calls you to far better and more needful obedience for yourselves, than when you command your child to take his meat, to wear his clothes, or, when he is sick, to take a necessary remedy. And is such obedience to be refused?

4. Hath not nature taught you to love yourselves? Surely you cannot be willing to be damned, nor be indiffe

rent whether you go to heaven or hell! And can you believe, that God would set you on that which would do you hurt, and that the devil is your friend and would save you from him? Can you believe that to please your throat and lust, till death snatch away your souls to judgment, is more for your own good than to live here in holiness and the love of God, and hereafter to live for ever in glory? Do you think you have lived as if you truly loved yourselves, or as self-destroyers? All the devils in hell, or enemies on earth, could never have done so much against you, as, by your sensuality, ungodliness and sloth, you have done against yourselves. O poor sinner, as ever thou wouldst have mercy from God in thy extremity, be entreated to shew some mercy on thyself!

5. Hath not nature deeply taught all the world, to make a great difference between virtue and vice, between moral good and evil? If the good and bad do not greatly differ, what makes all mankind, even the sons of pride, to be impatient of being called or accounted bad, and to love to be accounted wise and good? How tenderly do most men bear a reproof, or to hear what they do amiss? To be called 'a wicked man, a liar, a perjured man, a knave,' how ill is it taken by all mankind? This certainly proveth that the eonscience of the great difference between the GOOD and the BAD, is a common natural notice. And will not God make a greater difference, who better knoweth it than man?

6. If God had only commanded yɔu duty, even a holy, righteous, and sober life, and forbidden you the contrary, and had only bidden you to seek everlasting happiness, and made you no promise of it, should you not in reason seek it cheerfully in hope? Our folly leadeth us to do much in vain; but God setteth no man on any vain employment. If he do but bid you to resist temptation, mortify lust, learn his word, to pray to him, and to praise him, you may be sure it is not to your loss. Of a reward you may be sure, if you know not what it will be. Yea, if he set you upon the hardest work, or to pass the greatest danger, to serve him at the dearest rate, or lose your estate for him, and life itself, what reason can there be for fear of being losers by obeying God? Yea, the dearest service hath the greatest reward. But when he hath moreover ascertained your reward